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Xinerama Part of X
A reader writes "Xinerama will be part of X. "This is the FIRST and ONLY case of XFree86 code going into the shared implementation" Read more at http://www.xfree86.org/#xinerama. Does this mean even better movies? Or, are they only concerned with technical quality?"
For a look at what Xinerama is all about, take a look here:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Xinerama-HOWTO.html
I guess having a second monitor would let you watch a movie while working on screen 1, but that is not what Xinerama really is.
I think the poster was getting it confised with Xine (http://xine.sourceforge.net/)
The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they are when you kill them.
Does this mean better movies? Score another one for slashdot.
Xinerama is a multhead thing, not a movie thing.
11*43+456^2
You're correct, the submitter was an idiot. Xinerama has absolutely nothing to do with movies and everything to do with connecting multiple monitors to a single box.
:0.0, :0.1, etc.) and you cannot move windows between them. With Xinerama, you can make them act as a single display, allowing you to run only one instance of your window manager and drag windows between them.
;)
Xinerama is not necessary for multi-head setups. However, without it each monitor is a separate screen (i.e.
But, there is a downside. Hardware accelerated OpenGL for most video cards does not cooperate with Xinerama. I've been sort of waiting ever since XFree86 4.0 came out for nVidia to find a way around this in their drivers so that I can get away from software OpenGL rendering. I'm not holding my breath, though, as I imagine that splitting a single OpenGL scene at an arbitrary point across two completely separate devices is a tricky thing to handle very well.
The OpenGL problem aside, having several LCD screens all lined up next to each other is a Nice Thing. Just tell your boss you're more productive with such a setup -- I am honestly more productive being able to spread my work out over a wall of screens. I just run out of PCI slots real fast.
it does work. I have a dualhead xinerama setup at work and also the same exact setup at home.
dual_1600sw
I'm providing this info so that people know this config works. I asked many people at sgi if this would work (even posted to the usenet groups for sgi) and no one knew (surprising, eh?)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Um, this announcement has NOTHING to do with xfree86 tarballs. Xinerama was ALREADY THERE. What it has to do with is that xinerama will now be part of the main X consortium's tree. This will (eventually) make commercial X servers (such as those in Solaris, AIX, etc.) slightly larger due to xinerama support being "backported". Not enough so to make a difference in the grand scheme of things. It can take YEARS for X Consortium's members to get the latest code into their products.
I don't know if the original poster was kidding or not, but several other posters seem to think he was an idiot for suggesting it.
However, those of us with an appreciation for the history of the technology of cinema recognize that the term "Xinerama" is a play on the name "Cinerama" for good reason.
True Cinerama technology was not merely wide screen but highly curved, partially wraparound screen that required three projectors (in sync!) to cover. The visual effect was simply awesome (the first time I saw "2001: A Space Odyssey" was in a Cinerama theatre. Wow.)
Xinerama lets you, if you want, set up three (or more) monitors side-by-side, with the outer ones angled slightly, and place a wide-screen window across all three. Just like Cinerama. I don't know well the video rendering for, say, a DVD or MPEG player interacts with Xinerama, but yeah, you could have better movies.
-- Alastair